Emotional swarm robots of Empathy Swarm interact with the guests of Zagreb’s Museum of Contemporary Art and proof that Machines are not alone.

The robots and us experienced exciting days: from the robot’s first contact to strangers at the opening on Tuesday to a vivid discussion on ‘Autonomous relations: actions, reactions & tangled sovereign systems’ with artists Luiz Zanotello and Ralf Becker on Thursday and our final goodbye to the robots on Friday, who will now stay till 3. February 2019 all by themselves. Crazy to see the little ones grow up and become independent 🙂

We also want to thank KONTEJNER again for their hospitality and precious help setting up! We always feel very welcome in Zagreb and like part of the big Kontejner famiiy! ♥

These robots by artists Katrin Hochschuh and Adam Donovan are the most endearing work in the small exhibition at Impakt, center for media culture in Utrecht. The Empathy Swarm consists of a group of small robots on wheels. They form formations, draw towards each other, tapping gently against your shoe. It seems like they want to make contact. Or are those feelings of affection no more than human projection?
[...] It is striking that the Empathy Swarm shows how little is needed to generate empathy for an inanimate object. It raises the question why people sometimes have such bad care for their natural environment.

An intense week setting up Empathy Swarm for the very first time, with a great outcome 🙂

The swarm is keeping the memories of what it means to be human and its interpretation of human feelings and social behaviours, alive in – A world without us.

After a fantastic opening on Friday, we joined a panel discussion on Saturday with the other EMAP/EMARE artists Taavi Suisalu, Anna Dumitriu and Alex May, discussing how our works take part in a future scenario that we try to avoid.